


The Perfect Pumpkin

by PalmettoFoxDen



Category: Green Creek Series - T.J. Klune
Genre: Gen, Halloween, M/M, Pumpkin carving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 07:04:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16471007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PalmettoFoxDen/pseuds/PalmettoFoxDen
Summary: Joe wants to carve Ox the perfect pumpkin, but it isn't going very well.





	The Perfect Pumpkin

Joe needed to make sure that his pumpkin carving turned out perfect. He needed to prove that he was a good mate and he could provide for Ox. He needed to impress him. He wanted to carve the perfect pumpkin flawlessly for him. But Joe was not very good at pumpkin carving.

It didn’t help that Mark had been working on his pumpkin for hours, carving an intricate raven with ornate feathers for Gordo. Mark wasn’t on his third failed pumpkin. Mark was showing off for his mate with no problem.

Joe let out a growl of frustration as he carved out more than he meant to _again_. This pumpkin was going to turn out all wrong too.

“Joe, it’s fine,” Ox assured him. “It looks good. I like it like that.”

Ox was such a good mate. He was so kind in the face of Joe’s lackluster pumpkin carving skills. That only made Joe want to make him a masterpiece even more. Ox was the best mate ever and he deserved the best pumpkin ever. Joe wanted to show off and impress Ox. He wanted to show his mate what a great pumpkin carver he was but the problem was that he wasn’t. Nothing he carved looked like a clear anything no matter how much Ox pretended he could see a picture in Joe’s attempts.

Even Gordo was apparently good at pumpkin carving and had more patience with it than Joe. When he had seen what Mark was doing, Gordo had started carving his own pumpkin into the shape of a wolf. More specifically, he had carved it into the shape of Mark’s wolf. It was crystal clear what animal Gordo was carving. His didn’t look like four things mildly resembling legs with a weird lump on top.

Joe had a perfect mental image of the masterpiece he wanted his pumpkin to look like. If Joe couldn’t catch Ox a bear, he was damn well going to carve him one. Or, at least, that was the plan but his carving talent seemed to differ.

“It’s wrong,” Joe insisted. “The whole head is messed up now.”

“No, Joe,” Ox insisted. “It looks great. I can totally see a wolf in there.”

“It’s supposed to be a bear,” Joe snarled and then he knocked his pumpkin off of the counter and let it smash on the floor in a fit of frustration. Later, he would probably regret the mess. Now, he wanted to stomp on what remained of it.

“Oh,” Ox said.

It was too late for him to pretend he had seen a bear in it now and it was clear that Ox wasn’t sure what to do with that.

“At this rate, we're going to run out of pumpkins,” Carter pointed out with a laugh.

Joe glared daggers at him and gripped the counter far too hard.

"We are out of pumpkins," Kelly pointed out. "Unless he wants the one Timber peed on."

"No one wants the one he peed on," Carter insisted as he glared pointedly at the oversized wolf lying at his feet.

“Hey,” Ox said.

Joe didn’t look at him because he was preoccupied with feeling sorry for himself and huffing about his failure. He needed another moment to wallow in self-pity before he could stare failure and his mate in the face at the same time.

Ox’s warm body pressed against Joe's back and a moment later Ox’s arms wrapped around his middle. Joe’s tense shoulders relaxed on instinct in reaction to his mate's touch.

“You know I still love you for all kinds of other stuff,” Ox told him. “Even if you can’t carve a pumpkin.”

Joe huffed indignantly even though he knew it was true. He'd said it himself. It still stung a bit to hear Ox say it.

“It was supposed to be perfect for you,” Joe groaned.

“It isn’t a dealbreaker for me if you can’t carve me a decent pumpkin,” Ox assured him and pressed a kiss to Joe’s temple. "Honestly."

A little voice in Joe’s flared up in annoyance. Ox had said he had liked Joe’s pumpkin before he had messed the head all up, but now Joe's carving hadn’t even been decent?

“I’m never carving another pumpkin again,” Joe huffed. “Halloween is canceled. This pack doesn’t celebrate it anymore. I’m the alpha and I say no more Halloween.”

No one stopped carving. Bastards.

“Why don’t we get another pumpkin and carve it together later?” Ox offered.

Joe did like the idea of carving with his mate. Maybe, Ox would do all the detailed parts he didn’t have the patience to carve properly. Maybe, it would be easier without his whole pack watching him fail and Carter snickering every time he let a ten-pound pumpkin best him.

“Fine. Halloween is back on, but it’s on thin ice.”

* * *

Joe had almost let Ox convince him that the pumpkin they had carved together wasn’t an utter mess. Ox had prominently displayed it out front of their house and Joe hadn’t even felt the urge to kick it in before anyone else could see it because it was the product of their love and work together.

He’d almost come to peace with the fact that it was far from the perfect pumpkin he had wanted to present Ox with and that Ox had carried most of the weight of carving it when Gordo came over and took one look at it before announcing, “That is one ugly pumpkin.”

Joe growled something fierce but Gordo just let out a faint chuckle.

“Sorry, kid,” Gordo told him. “I’m not really shaking in my boots.”

The fact that Gordo wasn’t intimated by him in the slightest got on Joe’s nerves. He couldn’t be a scary alpha werewolf right. He couldn’t carve a pumpkin for his mate right. What was the point of Halloween if he couldn’t do anything right or at least be scary?

“I’m going to roam around town as a wolf tonight just to eat the pumpkin you made for Mark,” Joe warned.

“You took a bite of a pumpkin as a wolf last week and spit it back out,” Gordo pointed out. “You started pawing at your tongue trying to get the taste off of it. I don’t think you’re downing any whole pumpkins as one any time soon."

“Fine, I’ll bash it in as a human then,” Joe insisted.

“No, you won’t,” Gordo said as if it was the most obvious thing ever. “I don’t care if you break my pumpkin anyway and you wouldn’t do that to Mark.”

“I liked you better when you were afraid of us,” Joe lied. “I’m your alpha. You’re supposed to fear me.”

“Did you fear Thomas?” Gordo challenged. “You’re my pack and alpha and that’s why I don’t fear you. You wouldn’t do fuck all to me and we both know that. I don’t have to worry about you hurting me and my mine because we’re yours now too. I’m not planning on hurting your pack anytime soon. I'm not the one that has to fear you. You’re plenty intimidating, kid. Just not to me.”

It figured that Gordo just had to go and ruin Joe’s perfectly good sour mood.

“What are you here for anyway?” Joe asked because maybe he still had a little bit of that bad mood left even if Gordo had messed it up.

“My imbecile friends decided that it’s necessary to turn my garage into a haunted house for Halloween,” Gordo said with so much love for his shop boys evident in his tone, despite how hard he tried to sound annoyed. “They’re advertising it as the werewolf haunted house no one can miss so they sent me out to scrounge up some volunteers to scare the hell out of people. Probably so that I couldn’t stop them from decorating the place with I don’t even want to know what. I figured it sounded like you and your brothers’ kind of thing. That is unless you think you’re not scary enough.”

The opportunity to scare some willing humans and get his alpha mojo back sounded like exactly what Joe needed and he knew Carter and Kelly would be on board the moment they heard the offer. Joe already had Halloween plans to skip the tricks and give Ox a special kind of treat, but he was sure he could make time for both. Ox would probably want to help out at the haunted house anyway.

“I’m in," Joe said.

"Good," Gordo said. "I think if I didn't come back with any werewolves they were going to switch the theme to witches and I might have to burn my garage down if they started putting up stereotypical old hag witch decorations."

"Bad news," Joe told him. "Rico ordered a life-sized wart covered talking witch decoration like three weeks ago. He told everyone. It cackles and everything."

"I hate this pack," Gordo muttered.

Maybe if Gordo hadn't insulted Joe and Ox's pumpkin, Joe would have felt inclined to take pity on him and help break the fake witch decoration. Instead, he just laughed. This was going to be fun to watch.


End file.
